Greetings everyone! I am writing from the wonderful land of Slovakia, where I have been teaching for one year. Unfortunately, I am having some great frustrations with one of my classes in particular. They are about 16 years old and are out of control. I have tried everything!!! They have a new seating arrangement every class. I have reported specific students to the headmaster (who seems to ignore me), and I am not allowed to suspend the students from class... I am trying to be creative and motivate them somehow, but I am at wits end. I would appreciate any advice on how to deal with this group.

About the seating arrangement, is it you or someone else who decides who sits where?

Something that I've tried is to let students sit where they want but, after a warning, I move the unruly student to the desk nearest the teacher. First, they don't like to be next to the teacher and, second, they don't like to be moved during the lesson. They soon get the message.

Teenagers can be very competitive, so you could try making the lessons have lots of quizes, split the class up into teams and make them combat each other for the "glory" of winning. The problem here might be getting them to stop!

One method that's being employed in Scottish State Schools uses student reward books. When a student achieves something or behaves well the teacher records it in the book. This gives each student something to reflect over and work on. Verbal praise only has a positive effect for the length of attention span, which let's face it isn't that long for any of us! There's also an element of competitiveness built into these books.

Negative behaviour isn't rewarded and to great extent is ignored - well, as much as is possible! The idea is that students learn they have to behave in a positive way to gain the teachers attention. We all crave that attention, so much so that some of us are even prepared to do misbehave sometimes to get it

One method that's being employed in Scottish State Schools uses student reward books. When a student achieves something or behaves well the teacher records it in the book. This gives each student something to reflect over and work on. Verbal praise only has a positive effect for the length of attention span, which let's face it isn't that long for any of us! There's also an element of competitiveness built into these books.

Negative behaviour isn't rewarded and to great extent is ignored - well, as much as is possible! The idea is that students learn they have to behave in a positive way to gain the teachers attention. We all crave that attention, so much so that some of us are even prepared to do misbehave sometimes to get it

Your reward books sounds interesting, Iain. I also think that if students wrote something positive about their fellow classmates in a reward book that they can see, that would probably be worth more to the student because it's coming from their peers.

Also, we mostly do a lot of cooperative tasks with our misbehaving students rather than competitive games. The US military, who is very much involved in our schools, has taught us some games which we can use to get our kids to cooperate with each other in order to accomplish a task as a group rather than to compete against each other. After our misbehaving kids learn cooperation, follow rules, and learn good sportsmanship, then we give them competitive games so we can actually get them to stop and quit yelling!

The US military, who is very much involved in our schools, has taught us some games which we can use to get our kids to cooperate with each other in order to accomplish a task as a group rather than to compete against each other.

That sounds interesting, Diana. Care to share one of the games with us?

The US military, who is very much involved in our schools, has taught us some games which we can use to get our kids to cooperate with each other in order to accomplish a task as a group rather than to compete against each other.

That sounds interesting, Diana. Care to share one of the games with us?

Iain

Hi Iain,

I will be happy to share some of the games the US military taught us. One of the military guys place 2x4 wood on top of cinderblocks that are laid flat on the floor. He told the teachers to balance themselves on the 2x4 wood. There were about 40 of us in the group. So, we did as we were told. Then he told us to arrange ourselves according to our birthdates and without stepping off the 2x4 wood. Also, we were told that we cannot talk at all and we were timed. (The last group of teachers who did this used body language to communicate to others their birthdates.) The group I was in was a lot smarter though. Instead of wasting our time using body language, we whipped out our pens and wrote our birthdates on the palm of our hands. After the activity, the military person in charge told us that we were the ONLY group who used a pen to communicate instead of body language. The hardest part was trying to arrange ourselves according to birthdates without stepping off the wood. We later figured out that the best way is for people to kneel and the other person trying to get through the other end will climb over each person. The person whom he/she is climbing over will also hold the climber for balance. It's funny with adults doing it. Kids do it much easier and faster. A lot of the activities the military showed us has to do with "Team work" - working together to accomplish a goal.

The other game was also funny. The military guys gave us cards with the names of different animals. I got a card that says "dog" on it. Everyone has a different card. We were told that another person in the room has the same animal card as we do, and we were instructed to find that person - our partner animal. However, we cannot show our card to anyone or tell anyone what card we have. Instead, we are supposed to walk around with our eyes close and arms extended in front of us and yell out the animal sounds we have on our card. So, there I was barking "Woof! Woof" trying to find my partner who was also barking like a dog amid everyone else making all sorts of animal sounds. All this was done with our eyes closed, and we can only depend on our hearing to find our partner. This is a good activity to promote listening skills.

At my school we keep behaviour logs of very difficult students. Every time they forget their book, don't do their homework, are annoying in class, reported to the headmaster, etc. will be noted down. The students take this log home every week and the parents have to sign it. It works magnificently!!

At my school we keep behaviour logs of very difficult students. Every time they forget their book, don't do their homework, are annoying in class, reported to the headmaster, etc. will be noted down. The students take this log home every week and the parents have to sign it. It works magnificently!!

We developed the same thing in my team. It was actually part of our student discipline plan, and we called it a "daily monitor sheet." The misbehaving student who needs his/her behavior monitored is responsible to let all his teachers sign the sheet. The parents is also responsible to sign it when the kid comes home. In many cases, it has worked. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with parents who don't seem to care. And that's one of the main reasons why the kid is the way he/she is. If the parents don't care, why should the kid? In cases like this, we try to work directly with the kid as much as possible otherwise he will end up in an alternative program for behavioral problem kids, which we consider the last resort.

It almost sounds like some high school classrooms are a waste of time! How unfortunate that a very few (surely it can't be more than a few) misbehaving students have created this state of affairs. How unfair it is to other students. How unfair it is to teachers who, I feel certain, did not see their future roles this way when they were learning to be teachers. Must these abusers of the classroom be retained in school? Surely no one has this kind of "right"!

I must say that is one of the primary reasons why I prefer to work with adult and college age students. It gives me the opportunity, if absolutely necessary, to ask the offender to simply pick up his things and leave. I have work to do with language learning and so do my students; I have no time for the kind of things I've been reading about here.

Thanks for your contribution here. In difficult situations, I tell myself that I'm paid to get them through their exams, not to be their friends (although if I can do both it's better ).

However, I would like to know what 'Be strict' means to you. Looking back at the original post, emma says that she has 'lost control', having 'tried everything'. Do you think that there are other strategies that she can try? If so, what ? Exactly how can you be strict?

I agree with Sian. A teacher should always be strict and fair. If the teacher is too nice, the students can easily take advantage of that and walk all over the teacher. A teacher is strict when he/she enforces his/her classroom rules. By enforcing the rules, the students will realize that the teacher means what he/she says.